


Do hunters dream of electric beasts?

by sugarboat



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual, Dom/sub Undertones, Intercrural Sex, Oral Sex, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:50:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: The Hunter finds an unopened summons to the forsaken Castle Cainhurst, and has more than the expected troubles locating its intended recipient.





	Do hunters dream of electric beasts?

**Author's Note:**

> This contains spoilers for Alfred's storyline.

Nothing about the event in question seems particularly portentous, but perhaps the Hunter is simply incapable of heeding warnings. 

There’s an unassuming envelope, its paper yellowed and aged, and it sits on a desk. Like every other surface in Cainhurst Castle (or is it Castle Cainhurst?), it is covered in a fine layer of grainy dust. When the Hunter lifts it, edges pinched between their forefinger and thumb, plumes of grey grit, almost soot-like, fall off to blossom in whirling clouds and bring momentarily life to stale, dead air. A soft, puffing breath from the Hunter has it cleared. The thick royal purple wax of the Cainhurst seal shimmers wetly in golden, flickering candlelight. 

As soon as the envelope is in their hands, the Hunter feels they should have left it lie. They clear their throat, mouth dry but pulse calm and strong in this rare stronghold of safety. There is no one – living – in the grand room, aside from the last Queen, and she has not stirred from her throne, her graceful perch regal and languid, her masked visage betraying nothing. Craning their neck, twisting their spine, the Hunter slips their gaze to the stone carven nobles. They are unable to shake the notion that these statues were, at one time, flesh. The echoing refrains of a half-remembered tale linger in their head, of hideous beasts and terrible beauties, whose bare faces could petrify any who gazed upon them. 

Well, once living or not, these marble idols can voice no complaints now. Still, the Hunter feels unduly judged, touching things that are not theirs. 

They flip the summons in gloved hand. The paper feels brittle and fragile, as though it would crumple to its base components if crushed within closed fist. Smears of rusty red are streaked across the parchment, and its lower corner is blackened as though ichor has leaked out from its inside. There is no name sprawled across its outsides, but the Hunter feels that opening this ancient invitation would be a trespass too far. Even so, they pocket the envelope, and spare their newly-anointed queen an arcing bow, arm splayed and fingers lilting, and rise with a smirk on their face. Annalise grants them a slow, ponderous nod. Her hands primly fold atop another while her fingers flutter like the frantic legs of spiders. 

And the Hunter leaves, and thinks of the Castle no longer. The covenant and family, joined on whim, sinks to the back of their mind.

\--------

The letter is less easily forgotten. It burns like a white-hot brand in their leathers, an ignited flame of curiosity. The Hunter goes to the Chapel, that bulwark of peace in the city’s rotten core, reeking as it is of the cloying sweet miasma of incense and further, the base, offal smell of human desperation and terror. Unpleasant, but not unwelcome, transformed by circumstance into something that draws forth memories of homecoming. A nest, quietly obtained, decorated with the few companions the Hunter has managed to extract from the city in its death throes. 

They hook fingers beneath the leather and cloth of their mask to yank it down, exposing their face. Always, they expect to find the four inhabitants of the Chapel gathering, but always they are surprised. Each – whore, nun, dweller, and crone - seems content with their solitude, occupied by their own thoughts. The Hunter supposes there is little enough to say. Their boots clack with appealing verve on the stone and marble floor, without fear of rousing beast or other nightmares. They stop before the strange keeper of the chapel and flop to the floor before them, taking care not to disturb the spreading and frayed edges of their rags, or any of the numerous candles melting to puddles on the ground.

“Back again? You’re welcome to come as oft as you like, Hunter, of course, of course,” the Dweller mutters, elongated palms tipped upward as though in supplication. Their form resembles, if vaguely, the ghostly apparitions the Hunter saw within Castle Cainhurst, the warped figures butchered in life and subservient still in death. The Hunter suspects they might know something of the Vilebloods, perhaps know even of someone still waiting for an invitation to their desiccated keep. They lean forward and present the envelope to the Dweller. Their long, dark hands waver about their own, coming close but never touching, as if such contact has been forbidden.

“Oh? What’s this then?” The Hunter crooks a finger to tap on the waxy seal. The Dweller shakes their head, wobbling about as though precariously perched, the movement oddly sinuous and reminiscent of a serpent. “Ah, I know nothing about any of that, Good Hunter.” Following, their unnerving, breathy laughter; a tic, the Hunter presumes. “Mayhap… one of the survivors? In the Chapel, or the City, if there are any such who remain…”

Well and so, nothing is ever easy, is it? The Hunter nods, stowing away the invite, and begins to rise.

“I do have a question for you – if you have the time, that is.” The Hunter nods again. They relax back onto their haunches. “I was only beginning to wonder, what do you aim to do, once this Night is ended?” 

The Hunter crooks their head, and the Dweller continues.

“I mean only- will you stay? In Yharnam, after the Hunt’s over?” The Hunter’s eyebrows rise, incredulous, and the Dweller gives that high laugh again. “Oh, I know it seems bad now – I don’t expect there’ll be much left, after all this – but, a home is a home. There are those with nowhere else to go.”

At this, the Hunter feels an unexpected pang in their chest. Their thoughts swirl fitfully to their own home, feeling like a beast has slipped its fetid hand between the lathes of their ribcage to ensnare their heart. A _longing_ , sudden and deep, for familiar streets and faces, and it cuts through the foggy haze of their mind in a way not even fear has managed. It is like they have awoken from a dream – the first _real_ emotion they have encountered since receiving their transfusion, and they are left a brief moment to marvel at what they have become; what they might have done to themselves in their desperation.

And then all sinks back into shrouded gloom, and their blood burns hot and alive. 

“Just a thought, just a thought…” That laugh, that soft, hideous laugh, like the last air released from collapsing lungs. “I wouldn’t dare imply that _you_ have nowhere else to go, Hunter.” 

They linger, but the conversation seems to have reached its end. The Hunter rises to their feet. An uneasiness churns in their stomach; they take long-legged strides to the lamp. They kneel.

This is not retreat. 

\--------

The Hunter’s Dream greets them as it ever does, serene and calm, but the Hunter cannot help the suspicion that malfeasance lurks somewhere beneath its placid surface. The Doll greets them as she ever does, a gentle incline of her head. Her features pleasant and inviting. Does something lurk within there, too? The Hunter would prefer to not find out.

“Good Hunter,” she murmurs at their approach, and coming from her petal pale lips, it sounds almost believable. The Hunter, of course, knows better. “Do your hunts trouble you so?” 

The Hunter shakes their head. The Doll tips forward at her waist, a reverent half-bow.

“Is there something you have come here seeking?” The Hunter weighs the truth of this, considering, and pulls the invitation free. They have to raise their hand to bring it to the Doll’s height.

She leans forward, graceful and slight. They watch her eyes flick back and forth over the letter’s surface. Then she draws back to her full height, and shakes her head mournfully. 

“That is not for me; I could not answer, even if it were…” There is a heaviness behind her words. The Hunter does not care to notice, returning the envelope to their breast pocket. They return their gaze to the Doll, entreating, and she shakes her head again. “I cannot assist you in this matter, Good Hunter.”

The Hunter huffs an exasperated sigh; can she not even point them in the right direction?

“For all such summons, there are those who would receive it,” the Doll says unprompted. “But I do wonder if all such summons should be heeded.”

Home, again, their thoughts are drawn, this time soured and putrid. 

“Something to think on, perhaps,” she finishes, “during your long night.”

The Hunter turns away, fists clenched at their sides, and kneels before a gravestone. They do not want to _think_. 

\--------

Instead, they gorge themselves on blood.

They think of the envelop no longer, with its unnamed recipient and moldering innards. After all, the night is long, and as they have been told, a Hunter must Hunt.

There is plenty of death and horror to keep their attentions.

\--------

The air is thick and briny, with the copper tang of freshly spilled blood still leaking from shorn flesh and the salt-slick taste of rotting fish. The village in the forest; the Hunter has carved through its inhabitants, each blood crazed and half-mad, becoming less and less human as the night goes on, as the moon waxes and waxes and waxes. Their leathers are slick and gore covered, and damp from their hips down with mildewed, stagnant waters. All in all, it remains a good Hunt, and the Hunter is in high spirits, pulse bounding and electric, singing in tune with the slaughter in which they indulge. The meat of their thighs throb in sharp spikes, punctured as they have been with needle after needle. 

They feel nearly invincible; the numbed, lanky lunges of the villagers are child’s play to dodge. When the sorry creatures manage a glancing blow – ripping flesh or burning tissue – the pain of their injuries is invigorating, the rush of endorphins intoxicating, and the slow knitting of their skin back together almost addictive. Their body is all heat and lightning, pulsating and alive. 

Time is something they used to worry about. They were frantic with it, before; never enough time. Spilling like dry sand through clutching fingers, and all their struggles to hold on only causing more to trickle out. Tonight, for once, time isn’t an issue. They rip through the village in a burning rage, first. Unable to say what has angered them so, but bubbling with it all the same. They stop before the windmill, panting and soaked with blood. 

Stop. Reset. And go through again.

The same people, they go through the same motions. For the most part, they die in the same manner, too. Dodging and stalking and jumping, mindless, into frays. The Hunter loses track, whether it is round five or six when they stand panting before the windmill, and finally feel absolved. Burned out. Bone weary with exhaustion. Thoughts slow and mild, pulse hot and fast. 

It’s the round after that where they get sloppy. Not enough to die – they like to think they’re well beyond that point – but a villager gets close enough to land a wallop of a punch right into their chest. Hard enough to wind them, and they’re shocked at the crackling, crumbling sound produced, half convinced a slab of their ribs is about to collapse in. For his ability, the nameless, groaning villager is gifted an axe to the face. 

Still wet with the man’s warm, metallic blood, the Hunter prods along their side, frowning when sharp jabs from their own fingers produces no overt agony. They reach inside their leathers, into a pocket sewn along the front, and withdraw the crumpled Cainhurst summons. Held between fore and middle finger, the Hunter flicks it back and forth, bare back and wax-sealed front. They’d nearly forgotten its presence, and though their bloodlust has been thoroughly slaked, they are no closer to solving the mystery of its delivery.

Well, no time like the present. No time at all.

\--------

They don’t speak to the Doll. 

\--------

The Chapel is calm and silent, its air thick and syrupy sweet. The refugees don’t talk to one another, or perhaps only do so sparingly. The Dweller has commented on the various survivors’ tolerance of their existence, so it can be extrapolated that some conversations, at some point in time, have occurred. The Hunter simply never catches them at it. It isn’t something that bothers them, not exactly. It festers quietly in their mind, makes them wonder. Do they know when the Hunter is coming? Do they not want the Hunter to hear them? What, what, what, do they talk about, that the Hunter cannot know?

These thoughts do not feel like their own. They are rotten and paranoid, and the Hunter squashes them when they arise. These thoughts fester, quietly. 

Arianna has placed herself close to the lamp, and for this the Hunter is thankful. She is precisely who they want to speak with. It seems silly they didn’t go to her in the first place. Perhaps she is not of noble birthing, but she lived (or worked) in the Cathedral ward all the same. And there is something in her lax posture and flaxen hair; in the pale, slender length of her neck that invites parallel to the masked Queen. If any of the gathered refugees would have need of invitation to the Castle, Arianna seems a safe bet. 

“Oh, dear hunter, you’ve returned,” Arianna states. Her voice is soft and flowing. “Back for more blood, are we?” 

A shiver runs down their spine, and at the back of their mouth, their gums tingle. Arianna’s blood is sweet indeed, cloying and thick on their tongue. There is a temptation to draw forth more, but they’ve already accepted her gift. They don’t want to hurt her. It is with monumental effort that they shake their head. Arianna gives a wane smile in response.

“I’m afraid there is nothing more I can offer you in thanks… on this night, at least.” The words drip with delectable insinuation. The Hunter shudders anew, and wonders if they would ever take her on the unarticulated offer. “And how it does stretch… it feels like such a long, long night.” 

Her fair skin all but glows in the flickering light thrown off by a multitude of candles. The Hunter draws the summons forth and offers it face up, holding it with open palms for delicate fingers to take.

“Oh? What is this?” Arianna holds the letter aloft, treating it like a fragile gift. The Hunter imagines that butterfly wings wouldn’t fracture in her care. “That’s the crest of the Cainhursts’ – a summons, is it?” 

She hands the letter back to the Hunter in the same way it was received. The Hunter feels graceless and clumsy as they take it up again, stuffing in their jacket with lips pursed and brows drawn. Another dead end. Still, Arianna gives a chiming laugh at their sour expression, which is reward enough in itself.

“It is ill omens to accept an invitation not meant for oneself,” Arianna says. “There is nothing a noble in Castle Cainhurst could want with me.”

The Hunter raises a brow.

“Well,” she concedes, “nothing they could not obtain elsewhere. If there are any left at all. I’ve heard it said that the Castle is abandoned now. Perhaps someone new has taken up residence.” 

The Hunter inclines a shoulder, shrugging, and Arianna’s smile tilts upwards at one end, too. _Who knows_ , the two seem to agree. They cannot help a sigh as they leave her to her contemplations. The old lady, who has yet to reveal her name, does not seem a likely candidate for royal invitation. The Hunter’s gaze tracts to Sister Adella, with her clasped hands and muttered prayer, and they don’t even bother to entertain the possibility. 

\--------

Their heart has clambered up into their throat. With striking insistence they do not feel, the Hunter raps their knuckles upon the dark glass windows of the clinic door. After their stint of sneaking in the back, will Iosefka even answer? The doctor was standoffish and threatening within her sanctuary. And the remnants of her patients…

“Who’s there? Are you sick?” 

The Hunter thumps a reply, and Iosefka heaves a sighing breath that can be heard even through muffling wood. 

“Oh, it’s you. Returned again.” There’s a pause, and then, an accusation. “You murdered all my patients. What did they ever do to you?” 

The Hunter wonders for what purpose they had been treated. 

“…you must think me a monster,” she says. Her voice is closer, as though she has brought her mouth near to the frame. The Hunter could imagine her leaning against the wood and glass, white gloved hand coaxing and soothing. “Of course. You never understand.” The words suddenly bitter and acerbic. There is a rustling sound. “No, no one ever understands.” 

They both linger in silence. The Hunter feels out of their depth, stomach clenching itself in knots. 

“What do you want from me?” Iosefka’s voice is a rasp, as though she is thoroughly drained. The Hunter presses the waxed side of the envelope to the glass of the door. 

“What? What’s this? I don’t have time for this, Hunter. I will give you nothing more,” she snaps. Irritated despite themselves, the Hunter beats a fist against the door and withdraws. 

“Unless you find any who require… safety!” the doctor calls after. “You should feel free to send them my way; as always, Good Hunter, as always.”

\--------

They are out of leads, and all the more rankled for it. A Hunter must Hunt, not deliver missives. 

\--------

“Ah, Good Hunter! A moment of your time, if I may!” 

Beneath their mask, the _good_ Hunter grimaces. They are halfway ascended the stair when they pause, one leg extended and one crooked, to scramble for a name to put to this other hunter’s face. The two of them have spoken, a time or more in passing, and most of what they remember is the white clothed hunter being rather… long-winded. And sweet faced, too, for the occupation he claims. 

“I have heard tell of a strange tale on this long and fruitful Night; I had hoped you might be able to add Veracity to these claims.” 

The Hunter can hear the subtle stressors of Capitalization in his speech. They wonder who has retained their wits enough to spread rumors. Bizarrely, they think of crows, fat and bloated on carcasses as they are, dragging themselves about by their wings and chirruping, cawing, whispering secrets. Their head is filled with flights of fancy, the susurrating of silky feathers, as they turn and stalk towards the hunter- wait, executioner, they remember in a flash of blinding, serendipitous recall. 

Approaching, they shake their head to clear their thoughts; an action with unintended consequences, first manifest in a slouching of the executioner’s – Aegon’s? No, too esoteric – shoulders. 

“A pity,” heaves the executioner Albert. “I had thought at last to have found my way to my Master’s side!”

The two stand an arm’s length apart, and the Hunter thinks that _Albert_ isn’t quite right, but they feel very close to the Eldritch Truth. 

“I shall just have to travel to Hemwick – that vile _witches’_ den – to see the truth myself,” Abel laments. Strange it is to watch, as he cycles between abject resignation and prickly fervor, so heated that he literally spits out the cursed syllables of _witches_. His words prickle in their back of the Hunter’s mind, like skittering arthropods across loose dirt. Something about Hemwick, and Allan’s greater purpose… It sits on the tip of their tongue, but they cannot curl the organ into any sense. 

“It is said a nobleman’s carriage was spotted at the crossroads. A gaudy, gilded thing!” The Hunter finds it fascinating, the detesting curl of Adrick’s lips. “And emblazoned on its side with a particular covenant’s crest.” 

_Cainhurst_ , Vilebloods, and the Hunter jolts as if with a shock. The executioner has turned his back to them and trudges, morose, across the square, his booted steps echoing almost obscenely in the somber silence of the night. He stops at the edge of the dais, and the Hunter can see his dark clad hands wrap around the gnarled black lines of the iron wrought fence. His hands rest easy between the wide, wicked spikes that jut upwards in vain folly towards the sky. They wonder what the spikes are meant to deter, and dig in their pockets for a letter that is crumbling with age, and stained with blood and unknown foul substance.

“I thank you, friend, for your time,” Alfred - _Alfred!_ \- says, even as his fingers clench around iron and his hands twist and twist and twist, as if wringing a rag. Or a neck. The Hunter gives him a tap on the shoulder. 

“Hmm? Ah, is there somewhat I can do for you?” The executioner turns around, and they are closer than previous encounters. The Hunter imagines they could feel the heat of his breath across them, if they could feel anything hotter than the blood shunting through their veins. They shake their head. Their eyes narrow at the delicate pleating of Alfred’s brow, like he is disappointed in their answer. The expression is fleeting. They lift one hand and display the envelope, flick it between fingers to demonstrate the stamped crest on its front, rich wax nearly black in the shrouded moonlight. A soft gasp, and blue eyes widening, and Alfred lifts his hands halfway to theirs.

“Is that-” Breathless, he doesn’t finish, but the Hunter nods slowly, and their grip shifts, transforms the envelope from presentation to offering. The executioner is quick to accept.

_I do wonder if all such summons should be heeded._

Alfred’s hands clap upon their upper arms, and shake the Hunter with great vigor, his dull mood cheering.

“Friend, I feel my master’s hand at work among us!” The Hunter feels only their brains rattling, but manage a weak smile nonetheless. “These fetid streets may yet be purified, as long as hunters such as you and I remain in the fray!” 

\--------

Castle Cainhurst, swept in great drifts of snow and ice. A frozen tomb whose hallowed halls now serve as marker and grave alike for the lives of all who had once sought refuge within them. The Hunter is used to hearing these corridors ringing with the silence that follows complete abandonment, or filled with the shrieking caterwauling of the spirits haunting its depths. It is new, then, to hear the ravings of a madman emanate from the throne room. 

“…I smashed, and _pounded_ , and _grounded_ this rotten siren into pulpy pink flesh!” 

The Hunter enters the great hall, with its many lit tallows and stone-faced nobles, their steps muffled by thick red carpet. It wouldn’t matter the clatter that they make, as Alfred seems in to be in no condition to hear them. Each stride closer makes the scene they have come into clearer; the executioner is coated in blood, and a heretofore unseen golden helmet gleams upon his head. The Hunter wants, badly, to find this sight amusing, but there is indeed a pulpy pink mess sat upon Annalise’s ancient throne, and it quivers and throbs while the victor gloats and bellows to the skies. 

Blood, thick and sweet and coppery, floods the senses. 

Alfred is still braying. Filth and foulness and insides on the outsides, and laughter, laughter, laughter. The Hunter finds themselves with tingles jittering down their spine as they watch the display. They flinch when Alfred flips in an abrupt about-face, taking a thoughtless step backward, hands creeping towards their weapons. 

“Oh, it’s you!” The executioner is nothing but thrilled to see them. He darts forward and wraps them in a firm, unsettling hug. “Look at this! Thanks to you, I’ve done it!”

Their front is coated in their Queen’s blood. 

“Now Master Logarius can be canonized as a martyr!” They are tugged backwards to be held at arm’s length. Can the executioner see through his gaudy armor? One hand remains anchored on their shoulder, heavy and unyielding and warm, while his free casually knocks their cap off, before pulling down their mask. “I imagine I will be soon as well, for my part in completing the legacy of the Executioners.”

Something about his voice becomes appealing as it sinks into his lower registers, growling with dulcet tones of reverberation added by that ridiculous helm. Fine hairs rise along their limbs, up the back of their neck. 

“And what are _you_ doing here, I wonder?” He cups the side of their face, bloodied thumb stroking a firm line from the edge of their mouth to the top of their cheek and back. “Such auspicious timing, as ever. Do you want to know what _I_ think, clever Hunter?”

Numbed, sizzling, the Hunter’s tongue flicks out to the sticky smear left by Alfred’s touch. His thumb drags back down, and they lap at the rough material of his glove. Nod, as if dazed, in answer to his question. He chuckles, a sound still resting at the border of manic. 

“I expect you’re here to pay fealty, hmm? To the Executioner of the Vilebloods.” His hand is still hooked around their shoulder, grip strong enough that it feels like his fingers are digging down to their bones. He pushes on them and they quake beneath the sudden show of strength, and then gradually sink to their knees as the pressure remains unceasing. 

Their pulse is throbbing, bounding, burning in their veins. Alfred removes his hand from their cheek, and moves it instead to himself. The Hunter licks their lips, and squeezes their thighs together. There is a hint of tented cloth, beneath all the layers of his gear, and Alfred hisses out a breath between clenched teeth at the touch of his hand upon his buried length, dragging up and down. The cloth makes an indecent susurrating as he palms himself. The Hunter finds their hands leaping to the man’s thighs, kneading at thick muscle. 

“Ahhh, yesss, I had suspected as much.” He hefts the hem of his tunic, the outline of his cock against his breeches becoming defined. His hand gropes and wraps around himself. A little wet patch darkens the white material at near his tip and the Hunter shudders. Is this reaction from them alone? Or the _pounding, grounding, pulping_ of the dear deceased Queen? The Hunter finds it does not matter, their mouth watering all the same, with the heady scent of blood in the air and drying on their cheek, and Alfred’s fingers clawing bruises into their shoulder.

“Well? Go on,” Alfred says. An invitation and a summons. A recipient, the Hunter’s hands dart to the waist of his breeches. Deft fingers claw buttons free, and the executioner buries both gloved and blood-wetted hands in their hair. The Hunter moans when that grip tightens and twists, and their hips gives a miniscule buck as they drag the executioner’s clothing down to hang around his knees. His generous cock bobs free, curving up to his stomach. 

Oh, the Hunter wants this. Their body is heat and electricity and wet, soaking mouth. Alfred settles his left hand at the base of his cock, guiding it to the Hunter’s mouth. They strain to dive forward but the hand in their hair tightens in warning, the whine they release garnering no sympathy. He taps the head, the salty, dribbling tip, against their wanting lips. Smears it across their mouth until their tongue darts out to lap at the trail he leaves behind, and with a shaking groan Alfred slides forward.

They are given more slack as more and more of his length is fed into their mouth. The weight of him is solid, satisfying on their tongue, so hard he feels like hot, branding metal wrapped in sliding silk. They bob down, and back up, tongue squirming along the underside of his cock, tracing a thick vein they can feel bounding with his slamming heart rate. They tease at his leaking slit, and wish they had a second mouth to swallow the moans he releases in response. 

Time divorces from meaning, measured in slides of their lips, in the amount of his length they can take into themselves. His hands clench in their hair, and the Hunter gazes up towards him, yielding into his touch. Shuddering as he begins to guide them, pulling and pushing and dragging them. Farther onto his cock, the flared head popping into the back of throat accompanied by groans from each of them. Alfred’s hips snap forward, and in one squelching thrust he is buried in them to his hilt. The Hunter’s hands wrap around his thighs, fingers crooking and scratching, urging him closer, farther, harder. At the base, where his hand had wrapped, oh, the sweet song of blood sings on their tongue.

Saliva dribbles down their chin as he pulls himself free, leaving only his heavy head in their mouth, and there’s enough time for a quick gasp of air before he is pummeling their throat with quick, short thrusts, the Hunter groaning and humming their approval. All the blood in their body has pooled downward, their groin throbbing in time to their pulse, throbbing in time to the cock pounding down their clenching throat. 

“Oh, good hunter, st-stop, wait,” Alfred yanks them bodily off his cock. The Hunter blinks, startled, brain sluggishly playing catch up. Uninclined to wait for them, the executioner drops to a crouch before them, and hooks one arm between their legs, under and around one leg, the other supporting their chest and they are hefted into the air. A grunt and a toss and they land with a sickening splash of meat and viscous fluid. Land on a throne chair, surrounded by slick and pulsating, quivering flesh. 

Nausea threatens to rise in their gorge, conflicting unpleasantly with the intoxicating flames that have already been stoked within their gut. Alfred either fails to notice or to care, and he yanks their leathers aside, breeches dragged down to tangle around mid-thigh. Exposing their flesh to the pulpy, vile insides of the still living queen. 

And then they fail to notice or care anything outside of Alfred and his slick, biting mouth as the executioner descends upon them. His helm hit the floor with a sound like a great, ringing gong, but the Hunter was deafened by their own pealing cries at the scrape of straight, flat teeth along the tender insides of their thighs. Alfred sucks and licks and bites his way inward, the Hunter whimpering and twitching their hips forward such that the executioner takes them in hand, pressing them hard into squishing tissue and stilling their mindless movements.

They are laved and suckled with unerring, single-minded determination. Whatever servants of the Church may get up to, it has left Alfred achingly in tune with the reading of their pleasure. He works them with fervor, higher and higher, the Hunter clutching at the arm rests of the throne and writhing, and just as they are at their zenith, threatening to tip, the executioner withdraws. Kisses them breathless with a clever, wet mouth. 

There are tears stinging at their eyes, threatening to spill, their body thrumming with tension from the edge they have been forced to straddle. Alfred is stroking himself, head tilted back and sweat drenched locks hanging around his face. Their hands twitch fitfully, clawing into fine carven wood in a desperate bid to wait, to be patient, to not bring themselves to completion alone. The executioner grins down at them. 

“Ready, good hunter? Oh, you’ve been so good, so patient.” He climbs onto the throne with them, knees digging into matted corpse matter and soaked fabric. The Hunter clutches his shoulders as they are maneuvered awkwardly. Alfred ends with his cock pressing in the small wedged gap of their thighs, brushing against the underside of them with each movement. Saliva and dripping arousal from both of them makes the going smooth. He hunches over them, a hand gripping the back of the throne for support as he drives his hips forward, fucking against the Hunter, every snap dragging deliciously, cock pressing against beautifully sensitive skin.

The throne creaks threateningly beneath their frantically grinding weight. How he finds leverage is unknowable and arcane, but Alfred ruts into them with bone quaking power, and every shaking thrust winds the cord inside them tighter, and tighter, and tighter. Their breath gets caught in their lungs, and suddenly their muscles seize and clench and burn, stars bursting behind their eyes until their vision briefly whites and everything in their body sings, their blood and nerves and twisting, twining flesh, and Alfred keeps moving all the while, heedless of the mess they make. His hips crash into theirs once, twice more, and he comes with a long groan, going boneless above them while his cock pulses and cum splatters between their thighs.

Dribbles, no doubt, to rest upon the foul inside-outs of the Queen.

\--------

The next time they see the executioner, he is again slumped boneless and slack. A puddle of blood lies congealing and thick beneath his knees. It is all his own this time. A dull pang, like a beast wrapping its mutilated hand around their heart, clenches in their chest. 

They leave him where he lies.

\--------

This is a retreat.

They sit in the gardens of the Hunter’s Dream. They speak to the Doll, but cannot remember their words. She sits beside them, and cards porcelain fingers their hair. 

Nothing feels portentous. The two sit and watch the moon. 

“For all such summons, there are those who would receive it,” the Doll says unprompted. The Hunter watches her arm rise, palm upward and fingers beckoning, as if she is cradling the moon in hand. 

“I do wonder, if all such summons should be heeded,” the Hunter murmurs in response.

Perhaps the Hunter is simply incapable of heeding warnings.


End file.
